The present invention generally relates to multiblade slurry saws and the like used for cutting hard materials such as quartz, silicon, germanium and the like, and more particularly to improvements in the self-contained multiblade package used in such saws.
In earlier multi-blade slurry saws or the like, it was the practice to assemble the individual blades and spacers onto the blade head assembly of the machine. Such a procedure was time consuming and required highly skilled workers. These problems have been obviated by the development of pre-assembled, self-contained, multi-blade packages which are designed to be quickly and easily mounted into the blade head assembly of the slurry saw. There are generally two approaches in the manufacture of such multi-blade packages. In one approach, the blades and spacers are assembled in a large and heavy precision jig, and the blades and spacers are secured together by epoxy or some other adhesive or bonding agent. The problem with this approach is that the blade package assembly must be carried in the jig until the curing of the bonding agent is complete. This requires additional jigs so that other blade packages can be assembled while the curing process of prior assembled blade packages is in progress. Moreover, the size of the blade packages made according to this approach is, as a practical matter, limited due to the size and weight of the jigs. In other words, there is a practical upper limit to the size and weight of a jig which can be conveniently moved from place to place, and this size and weight is directly related to the size of the blade package which can be assembled in a particular jig. These bonded blade packages are quite expensive due to the intensive labor required in their manufacture. The other approach in the manufacture of multiblade packages is to use connecting rods which extend through aligned holes of spacer plates and end plates at either end of the blades. These are known as pinned blade packages and have the advantage of being quite inexpensive to manufacture, costing on the order of one-half the cost bonded multiblade packages. The prior art pinned blade package, however, generally does not perform as well as the bonded blade package and can not be manufactured to the same close tolerances of the bonded blade package. The blade packages assembled according to either of the foregoing approaches have required clamping blocks on either side at both ends of the blade package to facilitate the clamping of the blade package into the head of the slurry saw. In the past, these clamping blocks had to be removed from the blade head assembly of the saw and carefully cleaned and replaced with each change of blade packages. This can be a time consuming process. Moreover, the dimensions of the clamping blocks are such that they limit the number of blades in a blade package that can be accomodated in a given blade head assembly.